Arts Towns

Arts towns, also called arts cities, art towns or art cities, are cities or towns that are dedicated and recognized as having arts as a central feature to their cultural identity.

Santa Fe, New Mexico has over 5,000 artists living within city limits, and so is an excellent example of a revitalized art town: with a convergence of arts people, year round arts events, and infrastructure, including 10 art museums, and 100 art galleries, as well as classes and educational seminars and conferences.

Arts towns generate a good portion of their economy, their existence, and their tourist draws, from establishing a culture of the arts. By definition, a disproportionately large number of the citizens in these towns are involved in the arts: differentiation between other towns is based on that criterion.

Further arts towns or towns of art as the Europeans designate them include such internationally famous cities as Florence, the heritage home of renaissance art and of Michelangelo and Leonardo; centers for arts festivals like Tanglewood or continued larger centers of arts like Santa Fe; or such small towns as Nelsonville, Ohio, that have dedicated themselves to an artistic identity based on traditional ceramics and folk-art centered on an arts oriented town square.